City of Oaks Foundation Partners with City of Raleigh as a New "Bee City USA"

The City of Raleigh has been named as a Bee City USA®, and the City of Oaks Foundation will partner with the city in its efforts to engage the community in promoting pollinator-friendliness.

Bee City USA is a nonprofit national organization that galvanizes communities to sustain pollinators by providing them with healthy habitat, rich in a variety of native plants and free to nearly free of pesticides. Imperiled pollinators like honey bees, bumble bees, butterflies, moths, bats, hummingbirds, and others are responsible for the reproduction of ninety percent of the world's wild plant species and one in every three bites of food we consume.

As a Bee City USA®, Raleigh will partner with local non-profits such as the City of Oaks Foundation, to help citizens understand the importance of sustaining pollinators, and to protect and preserve important pollinator habitat.

Honey Bee on yellow mustard in Joslin Garden

"There is a lot of exciting work going on in our community, and being named as a Bee City USA® is important recognition of that work," said Foundation Executive Director Chris Heagarty. "In Raleigh, we understand the important connections between our ecosystem and agriculture, and the work we do with bees and other pollinators today will have a lasting impact on our food system tomorrow."

The City of Oaks Foundation manages the beautiful Joslin Garden, four and a half acres of gardens, streams, and trails that provide habitat to dozens of varieties of bees, butterflies, and birds, and works to preserve similar tracts of land as conservation properties and natural areas in the Raleigh community. The Foundation also uses conservation easements to partner with local citizens to protect important natural habitats on their own land, such as on the sixty acre Kellam-Wyatt Farm.

Bee hives supplement acres of natural habitat at Kellam-Wyatt Farm.

In addition to working with community partners like the City of Oaks Foundation, the City of Raleigh has a a wide range of projects that are part of the its pollinator-support activities . More information about these City projects can be found here.